Ours is a purely professional relationship, not of particularly long standing, since we've only seen one another fewer than six times in the past two years. But she feels relaxed and comfortable enough to explain that this is not one of her good days. She had been unable to sleep well the night before, and she was tired. Usually, she said, she's more than able to cope.

Her husband has taken time off to be with their two infants, and she's expecting her father to come over to spend some time, helping out, from his home in Europe to hers in Canada. Her baby girl is now all of ten months old. She showed me a photo superimposed on a drinking mug of her three-year-three-month-old daughter, alongside the younger one. Both pretty, smiling, cherubic little girls with midnight-pitch hair like their mother.

Their mother looks different than last we met, about a year ago. Amazing what a year can bring; it has transformed her from a lovely, fresh, dewy-complexioned young woman bursting with energy and commitment to a drawn-looking young woman, determined and committed to her profession. A proud mother, and a woman whose profession dedicates her to the health of others, while hers inevitably declines.

She is my personal physician, a woman who is personal physician to many others as well, and as such compartmentalized in her loyalties, her attention, her responsibilities. This appointment was arranged reluctantly by me, a face-to-face encounter necessitated by the fact that I required my prescriptions to be renewed. And responsibly, they can be renewed only by presenting myself physically for an oral examination, discussion, and a brief blood-pressure check.

The latter resulting in the usual white-coat syndrome, though I feel perfectly relaxed, and the former clearing up a number of queries that I had, to the best of her abilities. Her responses are swift and garrulous, and since her Eastern European accent is very much present, despite her excellent command of English, I come away not completely in possession of the answers I sought.

I used to wonder how our old doctor, now retired after representing our health problems which have been scant over the past forty years, managed to retain his sanity. He was always busy, his office packed with patients, and he seemed to regard each one of them as his very personal responsibility. His English was tinged with his native Arabic, but never did we experience problems deciphering what he said and what he meant to convey.

His retirement, however, enabled me finally, to acquire the medical professionalism of a woman, something I'd long contemplated and finally achieved. And we've a shorter drive to arrive at that destination than previously, a plus given our weather, and that today is blustery and snowing, heavily.